(Be wary of spoilers, friends. Be wary. But this is the one scene from cinema in 2007 that affected me the most and so I must press forward.)
The head nurse comes to Briony Tallis (played at this point in the film by Romola Garai) and advises a wounded French solider needs someone at his bedside and to hold his hand and offer conversation. Briony takes on the task. Once she is with the soldier we see he is not merely wounded but mortally so. These are his final minutes. He talks to her and as he does we recognize he does not know where he or who Briony is. "What is your name?" he asks. "Tallis," she tells him. "Do you love me?" he asks. "Yes," she says.
In the month since I first saw "Atonement" I've pondered from where my deep love of it comes. I think it's because I'm a writer. A paid writer? Well, no. Not yet. But being a writer has nothing to do with payment and if you think that's not true you're not a writer. Being a writer means you can't more than a couple days without writing for fear of getting edgy and freaking out. It means you tend to work out the issues of your life and convey your true feelings on paper rather than out loud. In the cases when you can convey them minus the written word it usually occurs to someone not directly related to the feeling you possess. You live with passion but said passion remains inside until written or until a moment when you simply can't hold it back any longer and it gushes forth. From the first moment we see Briony Tallis we know she is a writer (she is placing the finishing touches on her first play) and so what I've just said can work as a summation of her and so this is why I she is a movie character I will forever cherish.
"Have you ever been in love?" a fellow nurse asks Briony at one point. Briony says nay. "Not even a crush?" wonders the nurse and Briony confirms she did have a crush once. This would be Robbie (James McEvoy) who was a servant on Briony's estate when she was thirteen. Robbie loved Briony's older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and upon watching Cecilia and Robbie share a romantic moment - "something she thinks she understands, but she doesn't" - Briony comes back to this when a rape involving other people happens on said estate. She accuses Robbie and he is taken to jail and, later, forced to enlist in the army. Cecilia essentially disowns her family after this ugly incident and becomes a nurse. And, in time, so does Briony. Is this to atone for the sins of the past? Or is she losing whatever identity she had even further? "Your name is Tallis", says the head nurse. "There is no Briony." Briony looks out the window and repeats the mantra. "There is no Briony."
And so soon she finds herself with the French soldier. A French soldier who suddenly takes the place of Robbie. And Cecilia. Their fates are staring Briony in the face courtesy of this man she does not know. "I love you," says Briony. And so she has loved someone. She just couldn't admit it. Not until now. She never realized how much wrong she'd done lo those many years ago to Robbie and her sister and her family. Not until now. She never got the blood on her face. Not until now.
The French soldier passes away and she shoots to her feet. "Briony," she says to him, though, of course, by now he can't hear. "My name is Briony." She didn't know who she was. Not until now.
"Atonement" is told on a monumental scale. It spans decades. And, oh yes, the tracking shot. Everyone's talking about the tracking shot. Tracking shot this, and tracking shot that, and the tracking shot is spectacular and worked to the hilt for me. But that isn't the soul of the film. No, the soul of the film rests in this scene. Why? Because she bears her soul to this person she doesn't know it allows her to realize what happened before and influences - whether real or imagined - all that is to come.
Monday, January 14, 2008
There Will Be Blood
A Review:
Prior to getting to the diatribe of this most-anticipated film I'd like to mention a couple things - 1.) This is the first time Cinematic Arena has delved into a strictly dramatic film, so God help us all. 2.) This is the first time probably since Rory the Movie Idiot and I slung popcorn at the infamous Wynnsong 16 movie theater many years ago that we watched a movie together. Luckily, there was no fist-fight. At least not yet.
Paul Thomas Anderson's newest film, set at the turn of the century and eventually a little later on, detailing one man's rise and fall inside the oil industry, returns to the form you may recall from "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", which is to say it's drawn on a monumental canvas and reaches for the moon. He's got a lot to say, and says a lot of it well, but all of it? That's why Cinematic Arena exists, friends, to help you work through this as we work through it ourselves.
Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Planview. The first time we see him he is alone and mining for silver. The fact that he is alone is key, as he is alone through the whole film even if there are other people at his side. He breaks his leg, pulls himself out from below ground, and before long we see he has returned to his work - this time digging for oil. He strikes it big, though another tragedy occurs as a man dies leaving his son orphaned. Daniel takes in the son and next time we see him he as essentially become what we'll call an oil tycoon.
Then the quietly eerie Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) emerges and advises Daniel of potential oil in his tiny California town of Little Boston. (Notice the shot as Paul and Daniel first meet. You see just the two of them, Paul enters the room, sits, and only then are we shown that there is a third man in the room.) The two men talk, the audience is riveted, and Daniel agrees to head out to Little Boston.
Once there Daniel and his adopted son camp out on the land of Sunday family where it seems Paul has vanished and his twin brother Eli (also played by Dano) who runs the Little Boston church surfaces. When Daniel discovers the oil he covets, he buys up nearly the entire town, and sets about building an oil well. At a ceremony for the first well Eli asks Daniel if he can "bless" the well, Daniel says yes, but then when the ceremony comes he reneges and gives his own blessing. And so a battle between the two unlikely opponents begins.
Based in part on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" there is so much more to this movie that an entire review could consist simply of re-telling plot and so I feel I must pull up short of giving things away.
But some more things will be given away as any discussion of this film (and you'll understand when you see it) must include some giving away. So if you're wary of any further spoilers get the hell outta' this review right now.
I'm not one for blathering on about a filmmaker's point when I would rather be focusing strictly on the characters and what they do and how their choices affect them but when a film is so huge it leaves the word epic in the dust, well, it becomes a bit obvious, I think, the filmmaker does possess some intention of saying something to us. But what? There is the issue of capitalism at work, though not as much I would have thought going in, and the issue of God and faith. One man who didn't have much faith to begin with and slowly rests whatever faith he did have.
In fact, there are two showdowns between Daniel and Eli - one at Eli's church, one at Daniel's home - that would appear to be the crux of the film. Daniel is essentially forced into a baptism at Eli's church so he can gain land he needs to create a pipeline for his oil and from this point forward Daniel's greed and, I suppose, madness only grows.
Daniel Day Lewis is remarkable but, as I often say in regards to him, that goes without saying. Yet - yet! - some of the performance here rubbed me the wrong way. At the outset where he's just acting, no dialogue, and even deep into the second act of the film - especially the aforementioned baptism scene (which is brilliant-beyond-metaphors, and a scene no other actor working today could have made work in the day he did) - he's still amazing. But into the third act, as he becomes more wretched, more evil, more, more, and more, I think he started going overboard. Maybe Anderson was pushing him in that direction but for the first time in my life I wanted to call out to the screen, "Dial it down, Daniel!" (I didn't, of course, because he probably would have broken character and come out of the movie screen and picked me up and thrown me out into the street but never mind). Toward the very end there's a bit of dialogue where he shouts with such force that spit dribbles out of his mouth but the spit just looked calculated. It looked as if they had to do several takes so they could get the spit in the shot. The performance at the point ceased to be a performance. They were turning screws on us.
Paul Thomas Anderson has gone past over-the-top before and I haven't minded it. His biblical downpour of frogs in "Magnolia" to cleanse the streets of L.A. was capable of inspiring a "what the f---?" from the audience (I know because the person sitting one seat over from me said it) but it worked for me. Why? I never felt as if it was Paul Thomas Anderson up there in the heavens releasing these frogs to wrap up his sprawling film. The way everything had been established and set up it felt completely right.
The end is what will ceaselessly be discussed and, to be honest, this movie stopped working for me earlier than the end. (I didn't even mention Daniel's brother showing up, which felt like a contrivance necessary for Daniel to get a few words the script wanted him to say off his chest.) I felt like we were just watching a show. I felt like it was merely the director pulling his actors on strings from the scenes to get them to do what he wanted them to do to act out whatever it was he was trying to say. This end is made to divide people, and maybe saying what I've said will open me up to the proverbial "you didn't get it" blather, and that's just fine with me. Richard Schickel's review at Time Magazine has a completely different take on the end than me and since he writes for Time, well, he must know better than me. He called Lewis's work at the end "the most explosive and unforgettable 10 or 15 minutes of screen acting I have ever witnessed." I don't mind the hyperbole because I myself am prone to it and delight in it but I cannot agree, Mr. Schickel. I don't care what Anderson and Lewis are trying to say because the way they're saying it just seemed too in-your-face, too look at how craaaaazy we've gone! I liked some of the movie - I liked some of the movie a lot - but as a whole I was disappointed.
Oh, but the music's really, really good.
-Nick
A Response:
With the exception of Gone Baby Gone this was my most highly anticipated movie of the year. With Affleck's film it had a wide release and I managed to resist my Friday morning routine of reading every review I can get my hands on. There Will Be Blood was more problematic. Once reviews started popping up from the likes of David Denby and others, I couldn't resist reading. I read a lot of reviews, all glowing, many perplexed by the end. I also read a lot of interviews with Day Lewis and P.T. Anderson and generally gobbled up any information to do with this film. Oh and I probably watched the trailer at least once a week for a solid ten weeks.
So the excitement I had as Nick and I stood in a long line at the theater was almost un-containable. So much that I did not care that the film was nearly sold out. We were seeing this movie. This resulted in us being in the second row, approximately 2.5 feet from the screen. The only way i could see the screen properly was to scoot out to the edge of the seat, my knees crushed against the seat in front of me, my neck tilted sideways and pressed into the back of the seat cushion. Suffice to say taking in the full scope of the cinematography would be difficult. And at over two and half hours, my body was going to be put to the test.
Eager anticipation and bodily pain were the emotion and sensation I had when the film started. Could any film live up to that kind of pressure? This one started out with potential to do so. The first half hour of watching Day Lewis' Plainview work in silver mine with no dialog just the soundtrack and the sounds of work were just about as mesmerizing as it gets. And after a short stint showing Plainview striking it rich, we jump ahead to 1911 and to the real meat of the story. The smooth talking affecting Plainview was the perfect follow-up to the isolation I was left with after those opening scenes.
I'm generally not one for giving kudos to child actors but damn if there haven't been some fine performances by young thespians this year. Saoirse Ronan was the best part of Atonement and There Will Be Blood gives us a wonderful performance by Dillon Freasier. Half of my enjoyment of watching Day Lewis was actually in watching Freasier react along side him. An orphan who looks on with adoration at his father but still has that innocence of youth. And he seems to play the key role in the degeneration of Plainview from humanity.
I have to disagree with you Nick that the capitalism isn't as prevalent as one might think. It's practically smothering. Plainview is competition. Granted he reflect more the modern notions of capitalism than say capitalistic thought in 1911 but in the end I think Anderson is really making a film about today, even if its set 70 to 90 years in the past. The other prevalent ideology is radical religious fervor. Again more like a reflection of the time we live in. The problem is, and its the problem with any film that reduces a character to a symbol is it gets very tiresome, very fast. And these ideologies so heavy handed began to drain my energy.
At first the confrontations between Paul Dano and Day Lewis were riveting. Watching the two smash metaphorical heads like two rutting deer. But as their antagonism drags on and on and their extremism increases, it becomes a little stale. I actually wasn't that impressed with the baptism scene, Nick. It just felt flat. Not to mention that whole thing was set up very early and the payoff comes too late. And the brother subplot. It's utterly useless. It doesn't even make sense given the path the character has taken.
And that is really too bad because it is in this subplot that my favorite line from the trailer occurs. And what seemed like the center of a powerful scene was actually the center of an arbitrary and trite scene. And then there is what critics are calling the film's coda. Leaping ahead to 1927, Plainview now a Citizen Cane type recluse sits alone in a cavernous mansion. I can't even begin to figure out what that final scene between Dano and Day Lewis is about. I've heard it praised and perplexed. I've read it excused away and not one of those answers is satisfying. I've been thinking on it for a week and I can't find anything that is satisfying.
Still I agree with Nick, I lost interest long before the end so the fact that it was disappointing doesn't bother me too much. Still the idea that you could end the film with Plainview losing all his wealth in say the Stock Market Crash of 1929 seems like it would be fitting for his character. Oh well, you can't regret an end that wasn't made. Or can you?
-Rory
A Follow-Up:
Rory, you make an interesting point. Did we build this movie up too much? I confessed to you as we set for the theater how excited I was and I'd been waiting for it since the moment I read Lewis and Anderson had joined forces. But then I've built up other movies to colossal proportions and a good number of them not only met those expectations but also surpassed them. So, speaking only for myself, I don't think the hype inside my own mind caused it to stink any worse than it did.
I do have to give credit to Paul Thomas Anderson for making a film divisive enough that it will probably be poured over and argued about for years and years. Upon seeing it and thinking about it I had to turn to some other reviewers to see what sense they were able to make of the film, most especially in regards to the conclusion.
(Listen, people, you've got to see this movie if for no other reason than to see the end. No one, no matter how articulate, no matter how talented with the written word, could ever describe it in print. It must be witnessed, for better or worse.)
You either love it or hate it. It's such a generic saying but, man, I just don't believe there's any other way to put it. No one alive could possibly get to the conclusion of this film and merely say, "That was fun" or "I got my money's worth on that one."
In school I was terrible at algebra. Absolutely terrible. None of it made any sense to me. It still doesn't. I'd sit and stare at one algebraic equation for hours, trying to decipher how to solve it, and come up empty every time. No matter if someone explained it to me or not I'd just scratch my head, confused, realizing this subject of algebra was something I could not grasp and didn't really care to grasp.
"There Will Be Blood" is an algebraic equation.
- Onward & Upward, Nick
Prior to getting to the diatribe of this most-anticipated film I'd like to mention a couple things - 1.) This is the first time Cinematic Arena has delved into a strictly dramatic film, so God help us all. 2.) This is the first time probably since Rory the Movie Idiot and I slung popcorn at the infamous Wynnsong 16 movie theater many years ago that we watched a movie together. Luckily, there was no fist-fight. At least not yet.
Paul Thomas Anderson's newest film, set at the turn of the century and eventually a little later on, detailing one man's rise and fall inside the oil industry, returns to the form you may recall from "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia", which is to say it's drawn on a monumental canvas and reaches for the moon. He's got a lot to say, and says a lot of it well, but all of it? That's why Cinematic Arena exists, friends, to help you work through this as we work through it ourselves.
Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Planview. The first time we see him he is alone and mining for silver. The fact that he is alone is key, as he is alone through the whole film even if there are other people at his side. He breaks his leg, pulls himself out from below ground, and before long we see he has returned to his work - this time digging for oil. He strikes it big, though another tragedy occurs as a man dies leaving his son orphaned. Daniel takes in the son and next time we see him he as essentially become what we'll call an oil tycoon.
Then the quietly eerie Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) emerges and advises Daniel of potential oil in his tiny California town of Little Boston. (Notice the shot as Paul and Daniel first meet. You see just the two of them, Paul enters the room, sits, and only then are we shown that there is a third man in the room.) The two men talk, the audience is riveted, and Daniel agrees to head out to Little Boston.
Once there Daniel and his adopted son camp out on the land of Sunday family where it seems Paul has vanished and his twin brother Eli (also played by Dano) who runs the Little Boston church surfaces. When Daniel discovers the oil he covets, he buys up nearly the entire town, and sets about building an oil well. At a ceremony for the first well Eli asks Daniel if he can "bless" the well, Daniel says yes, but then when the ceremony comes he reneges and gives his own blessing. And so a battle between the two unlikely opponents begins.
Based in part on Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" there is so much more to this movie that an entire review could consist simply of re-telling plot and so I feel I must pull up short of giving things away.
But some more things will be given away as any discussion of this film (and you'll understand when you see it) must include some giving away. So if you're wary of any further spoilers get the hell outta' this review right now.
I'm not one for blathering on about a filmmaker's point when I would rather be focusing strictly on the characters and what they do and how their choices affect them but when a film is so huge it leaves the word epic in the dust, well, it becomes a bit obvious, I think, the filmmaker does possess some intention of saying something to us. But what? There is the issue of capitalism at work, though not as much I would have thought going in, and the issue of God and faith. One man who didn't have much faith to begin with and slowly rests whatever faith he did have.
In fact, there are two showdowns between Daniel and Eli - one at Eli's church, one at Daniel's home - that would appear to be the crux of the film. Daniel is essentially forced into a baptism at Eli's church so he can gain land he needs to create a pipeline for his oil and from this point forward Daniel's greed and, I suppose, madness only grows.
Daniel Day Lewis is remarkable but, as I often say in regards to him, that goes without saying. Yet - yet! - some of the performance here rubbed me the wrong way. At the outset where he's just acting, no dialogue, and even deep into the second act of the film - especially the aforementioned baptism scene (which is brilliant-beyond-metaphors, and a scene no other actor working today could have made work in the day he did) - he's still amazing. But into the third act, as he becomes more wretched, more evil, more, more, and more, I think he started going overboard. Maybe Anderson was pushing him in that direction but for the first time in my life I wanted to call out to the screen, "Dial it down, Daniel!" (I didn't, of course, because he probably would have broken character and come out of the movie screen and picked me up and thrown me out into the street but never mind). Toward the very end there's a bit of dialogue where he shouts with such force that spit dribbles out of his mouth but the spit just looked calculated. It looked as if they had to do several takes so they could get the spit in the shot. The performance at the point ceased to be a performance. They were turning screws on us.
Paul Thomas Anderson has gone past over-the-top before and I haven't minded it. His biblical downpour of frogs in "Magnolia" to cleanse the streets of L.A. was capable of inspiring a "what the f---?" from the audience (I know because the person sitting one seat over from me said it) but it worked for me. Why? I never felt as if it was Paul Thomas Anderson up there in the heavens releasing these frogs to wrap up his sprawling film. The way everything had been established and set up it felt completely right.
The end is what will ceaselessly be discussed and, to be honest, this movie stopped working for me earlier than the end. (I didn't even mention Daniel's brother showing up, which felt like a contrivance necessary for Daniel to get a few words the script wanted him to say off his chest.) I felt like we were just watching a show. I felt like it was merely the director pulling his actors on strings from the scenes to get them to do what he wanted them to do to act out whatever it was he was trying to say. This end is made to divide people, and maybe saying what I've said will open me up to the proverbial "you didn't get it" blather, and that's just fine with me. Richard Schickel's review at Time Magazine has a completely different take on the end than me and since he writes for Time, well, he must know better than me. He called Lewis's work at the end "the most explosive and unforgettable 10 or 15 minutes of screen acting I have ever witnessed." I don't mind the hyperbole because I myself am prone to it and delight in it but I cannot agree, Mr. Schickel. I don't care what Anderson and Lewis are trying to say because the way they're saying it just seemed too in-your-face, too look at how craaaaazy we've gone! I liked some of the movie - I liked some of the movie a lot - but as a whole I was disappointed.
Oh, but the music's really, really good.
-Nick
A Response:
With the exception of Gone Baby Gone this was my most highly anticipated movie of the year. With Affleck's film it had a wide release and I managed to resist my Friday morning routine of reading every review I can get my hands on. There Will Be Blood was more problematic. Once reviews started popping up from the likes of David Denby and others, I couldn't resist reading. I read a lot of reviews, all glowing, many perplexed by the end. I also read a lot of interviews with Day Lewis and P.T. Anderson and generally gobbled up any information to do with this film. Oh and I probably watched the trailer at least once a week for a solid ten weeks.
So the excitement I had as Nick and I stood in a long line at the theater was almost un-containable. So much that I did not care that the film was nearly sold out. We were seeing this movie. This resulted in us being in the second row, approximately 2.5 feet from the screen. The only way i could see the screen properly was to scoot out to the edge of the seat, my knees crushed against the seat in front of me, my neck tilted sideways and pressed into the back of the seat cushion. Suffice to say taking in the full scope of the cinematography would be difficult. And at over two and half hours, my body was going to be put to the test.
Eager anticipation and bodily pain were the emotion and sensation I had when the film started. Could any film live up to that kind of pressure? This one started out with potential to do so. The first half hour of watching Day Lewis' Plainview work in silver mine with no dialog just the soundtrack and the sounds of work were just about as mesmerizing as it gets. And after a short stint showing Plainview striking it rich, we jump ahead to 1911 and to the real meat of the story. The smooth talking affecting Plainview was the perfect follow-up to the isolation I was left with after those opening scenes.
I'm generally not one for giving kudos to child actors but damn if there haven't been some fine performances by young thespians this year. Saoirse Ronan was the best part of Atonement and There Will Be Blood gives us a wonderful performance by Dillon Freasier. Half of my enjoyment of watching Day Lewis was actually in watching Freasier react along side him. An orphan who looks on with adoration at his father but still has that innocence of youth. And he seems to play the key role in the degeneration of Plainview from humanity.
I have to disagree with you Nick that the capitalism isn't as prevalent as one might think. It's practically smothering. Plainview is competition. Granted he reflect more the modern notions of capitalism than say capitalistic thought in 1911 but in the end I think Anderson is really making a film about today, even if its set 70 to 90 years in the past. The other prevalent ideology is radical religious fervor. Again more like a reflection of the time we live in. The problem is, and its the problem with any film that reduces a character to a symbol is it gets very tiresome, very fast. And these ideologies so heavy handed began to drain my energy.
At first the confrontations between Paul Dano and Day Lewis were riveting. Watching the two smash metaphorical heads like two rutting deer. But as their antagonism drags on and on and their extremism increases, it becomes a little stale. I actually wasn't that impressed with the baptism scene, Nick. It just felt flat. Not to mention that whole thing was set up very early and the payoff comes too late. And the brother subplot. It's utterly useless. It doesn't even make sense given the path the character has taken.
And that is really too bad because it is in this subplot that my favorite line from the trailer occurs. And what seemed like the center of a powerful scene was actually the center of an arbitrary and trite scene. And then there is what critics are calling the film's coda. Leaping ahead to 1927, Plainview now a Citizen Cane type recluse sits alone in a cavernous mansion. I can't even begin to figure out what that final scene between Dano and Day Lewis is about. I've heard it praised and perplexed. I've read it excused away and not one of those answers is satisfying. I've been thinking on it for a week and I can't find anything that is satisfying.
Still I agree with Nick, I lost interest long before the end so the fact that it was disappointing doesn't bother me too much. Still the idea that you could end the film with Plainview losing all his wealth in say the Stock Market Crash of 1929 seems like it would be fitting for his character. Oh well, you can't regret an end that wasn't made. Or can you?
-Rory
A Follow-Up:
Rory, you make an interesting point. Did we build this movie up too much? I confessed to you as we set for the theater how excited I was and I'd been waiting for it since the moment I read Lewis and Anderson had joined forces. But then I've built up other movies to colossal proportions and a good number of them not only met those expectations but also surpassed them. So, speaking only for myself, I don't think the hype inside my own mind caused it to stink any worse than it did.
I do have to give credit to Paul Thomas Anderson for making a film divisive enough that it will probably be poured over and argued about for years and years. Upon seeing it and thinking about it I had to turn to some other reviewers to see what sense they were able to make of the film, most especially in regards to the conclusion.
(Listen, people, you've got to see this movie if for no other reason than to see the end. No one, no matter how articulate, no matter how talented with the written word, could ever describe it in print. It must be witnessed, for better or worse.)
You either love it or hate it. It's such a generic saying but, man, I just don't believe there's any other way to put it. No one alive could possibly get to the conclusion of this film and merely say, "That was fun" or "I got my money's worth on that one."
In school I was terrible at algebra. Absolutely terrible. None of it made any sense to me. It still doesn't. I'd sit and stare at one algebraic equation for hours, trying to decipher how to solve it, and come up empty every time. No matter if someone explained it to me or not I'd just scratch my head, confused, realizing this subject of algebra was something I could not grasp and didn't really care to grasp.
"There Will Be Blood" is an algebraic equation.
- Onward & Upward, Nick
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Forthcoming
Inspired by the NYT reviewers Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott and Stephen Holden who each recently took to the task of writing on scenes that were memorable from last year, Nick and I both wish to do this on our little site. So sometime soon expect a post of two from each of us describing what each of us felt was a scene so memorable that it still has us thinking about it.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
The Golden Compass
A Review:
In a parallel world (where people's souls exist as creatures outside their bodies as sort of spirit animals and the world is a combination of magic, technology and 19th century architecture) is where the story in The Golden Compass takes place. A secretive group called the Magisterium is working on a plot to maintain their control over everyone. Meanwhile Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) is at the forefront of scientific discovery and is attempting to travel to parallel universes. His young niece Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) may be a prophesied girl who will be important in a great war.
An agent in the Magisterium, Ms. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) takes an interest in Lyra which results in Lyra eventually on an adventure north to save her childhood friend. She has with her a golden compass (also called an alethiometer) which allows her to know things. She is joined on her quest by a band of sea people, witches, a talking polar bear and a pilot called Lee Scoresby (Sam Eliot).
And if you were wondering if that might possibly be the most ludicrous plot summary you've read in some time well let me assure you that is the best I could do with what was going on in this movie. Now that the plot is sufficiently in your head, lets get down to the nitty gritty. Is it worth your time? I guess that would depend on what the film-maker's intent was. Because if Chris Weitz fully intended me to laugh at times out loud at how absurd and stupid this movie was, then I guess yeah it is worth seeing. If that was not his intent (and I suspect it was not) then no. I'd suggest avoiding it like the plague.
I read a lot about the controversy of this film before I saw it. So I read that the book (part of a trilogy) written by Philip Pullman is essentially an attack on organized religion. Thus the evil group is the Magisterium, which is the word the Catholic church uses for its official doctrine. The film is being boycotted by some Christian groups and there was lots of concern for how much of the anti-religious rhetoric would be in the film. Perhaps if I had not read all about this the film might have played different. But as it stands the film plays pretty poorly on the message and pulls its punches frequently.
There is a bear fight sequence late in the film that is clearly supposed to be this big important moment. Sadly I was laughing the most during this scene of all the scenes that had come before. The CGI bears and the horrendous dialog was just to much. In the great climactic moment I actually couldn't hold back my laughter and cackled madly into the half filled theater which I'm sure upset quite a few people.
As far as story goes, not much of interest is going on. The soundtrack is so overbearing that I was actually annoyed especially in really dramatic scenes. How did I know they were really dramatic scenes? Because the score would swell and crash down as if pounding you in the head with drum sticks. Well what about the acting? There is an abundance of acting talent in the film. Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, great character actor Sam Eliot, Ian McKellen voices the bear, Eva Green, all are in the film.
All are also seemingly telephoning in their performances. Craig is barely in the film (I assume his role is more important in the later books). Kidman falls flat as the evil agent of the Magisterium. Sam Eliot is, well, Sam Eliot. Saddest of all is probably the great and venerable McKellan who is reduced to being the voice of a bear who utters the tritest of warrior code sayings on a regular basis. Oh and by the way, there is a cameo by Christopher Lee.
Wait, what? A film released by New Line Cinema based on a fantasy trilogy and has roles for both a sage like McKellan and an evil Lee. This sounds familiar. Did they black mail them? Are they that desperate to convince us that this is even remotely comparable to the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
post script: the spirit familiars in the film are called demons but everything I've read says they were daemons. Yes, daemon does eventually give us the word demon but it shouldn't be pronounced demon, it should be pronounced die-moan. That's just the loser classicist in me. Second thing, also classics related. The alethiometer shouldn't tell the truth, it should measure the truth. That's what its root words mean.
In a parallel world (where people's souls exist as creatures outside their bodies as sort of spirit animals and the world is a combination of magic, technology and 19th century architecture) is where the story in The Golden Compass takes place. A secretive group called the Magisterium is working on a plot to maintain their control over everyone. Meanwhile Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) is at the forefront of scientific discovery and is attempting to travel to parallel universes. His young niece Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) may be a prophesied girl who will be important in a great war.
An agent in the Magisterium, Ms. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) takes an interest in Lyra which results in Lyra eventually on an adventure north to save her childhood friend. She has with her a golden compass (also called an alethiometer) which allows her to know things. She is joined on her quest by a band of sea people, witches, a talking polar bear and a pilot called Lee Scoresby (Sam Eliot).
And if you were wondering if that might possibly be the most ludicrous plot summary you've read in some time well let me assure you that is the best I could do with what was going on in this movie. Now that the plot is sufficiently in your head, lets get down to the nitty gritty. Is it worth your time? I guess that would depend on what the film-maker's intent was. Because if Chris Weitz fully intended me to laugh at times out loud at how absurd and stupid this movie was, then I guess yeah it is worth seeing. If that was not his intent (and I suspect it was not) then no. I'd suggest avoiding it like the plague.
I read a lot about the controversy of this film before I saw it. So I read that the book (part of a trilogy) written by Philip Pullman is essentially an attack on organized religion. Thus the evil group is the Magisterium, which is the word the Catholic church uses for its official doctrine. The film is being boycotted by some Christian groups and there was lots of concern for how much of the anti-religious rhetoric would be in the film. Perhaps if I had not read all about this the film might have played different. But as it stands the film plays pretty poorly on the message and pulls its punches frequently.
There is a bear fight sequence late in the film that is clearly supposed to be this big important moment. Sadly I was laughing the most during this scene of all the scenes that had come before. The CGI bears and the horrendous dialog was just to much. In the great climactic moment I actually couldn't hold back my laughter and cackled madly into the half filled theater which I'm sure upset quite a few people.
As far as story goes, not much of interest is going on. The soundtrack is so overbearing that I was actually annoyed especially in really dramatic scenes. How did I know they were really dramatic scenes? Because the score would swell and crash down as if pounding you in the head with drum sticks. Well what about the acting? There is an abundance of acting talent in the film. Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, great character actor Sam Eliot, Ian McKellen voices the bear, Eva Green, all are in the film.
All are also seemingly telephoning in their performances. Craig is barely in the film (I assume his role is more important in the later books). Kidman falls flat as the evil agent of the Magisterium. Sam Eliot is, well, Sam Eliot. Saddest of all is probably the great and venerable McKellan who is reduced to being the voice of a bear who utters the tritest of warrior code sayings on a regular basis. Oh and by the way, there is a cameo by Christopher Lee.
Wait, what? A film released by New Line Cinema based on a fantasy trilogy and has roles for both a sage like McKellan and an evil Lee. This sounds familiar. Did they black mail them? Are they that desperate to convince us that this is even remotely comparable to the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
post script: the spirit familiars in the film are called demons but everything I've read says they were daemons. Yes, daemon does eventually give us the word demon but it shouldn't be pronounced demon, it should be pronounced die-moan. That's just the loser classicist in me. Second thing, also classics related. The alethiometer shouldn't tell the truth, it should measure the truth. That's what its root words mean.
- Rory
For me the finest moment of the whole film came right at the start when Lyra's friend is being bullied and she shoos the bullies away by telling of the curse supposedly wrought on the gate and anyone that passes. Of course, it turns out the curse doesn't exist but it demonstrates her quick wit and her determination. I liked that. I thought it was sweet. Little did I know that was as good as it would get.
I don't think I disliked it, Rory, as much as you, but I certainly was not overwhelmed or even semi-highly entertained. I did think Dakota Blue Richards gave a very good performance as Lyra. Child performances are hit-or-miss but I thought she was the rock that kept the movie from falling to pieces. I also really liked when she entered the hold of gyptians' ship and looked at all of them looking back at her and declaring, "What are you looking at?" (For what it's worth I thought Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman were also good. Craig, as you say, was barely in it but solid when he was onscreen and I thought Kidman did a decent job of portraying the icy stepmother-type role.)
Of course, what would a review of "The Golden Compass" be without a mention of the talking polar bears. I've gone on record as saying I should have no interest in seeing a movie with talking polar bears and yet for some reason the talking polar bears seemed to intrigue me in this case and whatever it was that caused that intrigue I hope never turns up again because, yeah, I'm just not a fan of talking polar bears in movies. Even if they're voiced by Ian McKellen. Again, the best part of the "big" polar bear showdown was the reaction shots of Richards as she watched her favorite polar bear in all the land do battle. (There's also Eva Green who I kept forgetting was in the movie and then would suddenly pop in to.....except now I'm forgetting why she was in the movie when she was in it.)
And what of the end? That last scene when they essentially sit there in the flying ship and
give us a beat-by-beat breakdown of all the adventure to come in the next movie? I mean, this isn't so much of an open-ending as an out-loud pitch to the audience to come back for the second installment. You can hear the director off-camera as they're saying their lines going: "See what you'll miss out on if you don't buy a ticket for the sequel? Please come back. Please."Sorry, Mr. Weitz. But I think what you've got here are two audience members who won't be back.
- Nick
Final thought:
I'll grant that Dakota Blue Richards did do a nice job. I will not grant you the Kidman praise. I was generally unimpressed by her. Eva Green was a witch or something. Or perhaps more accurately an expository device (she tells of the prophecy) and a deus ex machina (who magically, no pun intended, shows up in the climactic battle sequence?). The end was preposterously inane. Here's hoping its performance cancels any sequels.
-Rory
Final thought:
I'll grant that Dakota Blue Richards did do a nice job. I will not grant you the Kidman praise. I was generally unimpressed by her. Eva Green was a witch or something. Or perhaps more accurately an expository device (she tells of the prophecy) and a deus ex machina (who magically, no pun intended, shows up in the climactic battle sequence?). The end was preposterously inane. Here's hoping its performance cancels any sequels.
-Rory
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The follow-up (not the sequel) to 1998's "Elizabeth" finds Cate Blanchett returning to the title role for which she earned an Oscar nomination. This time around director Shekhar Kapur focuses on the eventful year of 1585. King Philip of Spain, a smidgen unhappy that a Protestant queen rules England, is attempting to supplant her with her Catholic cousin and if that ruse should fail, well, the infamous Spanish Armada is being prepped to strike out and settle the score with the Queen. Meanwhile, back at home, Elizabeth is being pressed by her closest advisor (Geoffrey Rush) to marry because if she's marries then she - the Virgin Queen - could have a child and if she has a child then they would have to endure no more talk of that Catholic cousin of hers taking over. Cue Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen)! He has returned from the new world, where he has named a region (i.e. Virginia) for her. Elizabeth finds her drawn to Raleigh but, alas, so is young Elizabeth Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish), a member of the Queen's court, and soap-operaish intrigue is bound to play out.
Did I tell you 1585 was eventful?
"Elizabeth" seems to have its eye on being an action-epic, complete with sumptuous visuals, lavish costumes, and thunderous performances. And it is, kinda'. All three things I mentioned can be checked off the list but there seems to be something missing. I was enjoying the movie richly at the start but the deeper we got into it, the more my enjoyment faded.
None of my dismay is Blanchett's fault. She is just as good as she was the first time around in this role. Not many actresses could pull off playing a Queen. Why? You've gotta' strike that difficult balance between royalty and, in private, still somewhat of a regular person. But not too much of a regular person because you know for a fact you're not. Owen is good, too, but I wish heartily the screenplay hadn't made him a walking proverb. Every other line of his is something like, "Why worry about tomorrow when all we have is today?" The King Philip we find here may as well have swung in on a chandelier from an old episode of Zorro. The only one who is about on par with Blancett is Samantha Morton as Mary, the wily Catholic cousin. She chews scenery but doesn't chew it too fiercely as to overdo it.
Granted, I don't know that much about English history, and I'm sure someone who does could pick this thing apart. I do know that apparently Walter Raleigh didn't steer a burning ship directly into the Spanish Armada but supervised this from the shore. Of course, that's not quite as dramatic, is it? So I had no problem with the Raleigh of the film being aboard the flaming ship. But, man, was this sequence boring to watch. I mentioned the film seemed intent on being an epic and you would assume England's defeat of the Spanish Armada would lend itself rather easily to epicness but Kapur botches it. Raleigh's steering of his ship into the enemy seemed about as authentic as the production of the same event in a high school play.
Do I recommend this movie? Well, Blanchett's work is worth the ticket price if you're the type of person who can get into a film solely because of the acting. But if you're looking for an accurate re-telling of history, you probably want to avoid it. And if you're looking for a swashbuckling adventure with some soap-opera mixed in, go to Netflix and add "Captain Blood" to your queue instead.
- Regards, Nick
A Response:
I probably know as much about English history as Nick and yet I can't help but wonder about one glaring problem with "Elizabeth." I know for a fact the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, not 1585. This should give you a sense of the absurd world we are entering when watching the film. Not that the compression of time isn't sometimes a dramatic necessity. Besides this film doesn't really want to be about history, it wants to be about people. In any event, since how time passes in this film is not entirely clear (we get one date at movie's open informing us it is 1585) it may not be historical compression at all but rather neglect to orient the audience that the time passing was years not days, weeks or even months.
Above I used the word absurd, Nick used the word sumptuous. These seem about right. This film wants to be epic and hits on absurd. Not that being absurd is necesarily a bad thing. Sometimes it makes a film that would otherwise be intolerable quite fun to watch, even if that wasn't the intention of the director. At times the film is quite bland, visually attractive to be sure with the cavernous palace sets and the menagerie of court clothing but unsure of what it truly wants to be all that visual feasting is muted.
There are times when the film is quite boring and tried my patience. Sad to say this was frequently when Clive Owen is on screen because I agree, Nick, all he was allowed to do was spout trite aphorisms. There are those moments when the film tries desperately to show a human side to the austere virginal queen letting us know that there was a woman behind the image who wanted what all women (and men to be sure) want: love and happiness. And so we get these scenes of extreme intimacy to the private life of the queen well played by Blanchet but ultimately hollow.
I'll cite one example, the queen surrounded by her female court is watching them dance, while Raleigh (Clive Owen) watches on. She decides he should dance as well, and unable to act on her own desires commands him to dance with her favorite attendant. And as she watches on with their awkward dance, the audience aware that the two dancers have recently become lovers, Blanchett looks at them and knows and a vein of jealousy can be seen. How the hell does she know? Queenly intuition? Blanchett's face is pitch perfect but where is the motivation?
There is an amazing cast here of English actors here: Geoffrey Rush, Owen, Blanchett, Rhys Ifans (Rhys Ifans, holy cow I didn't see that coming), Tom Hollander and Samantha Morton. Nick, you noted that Morton comes close to matching Blanchett but I'll go and commit heresy here and say she was better. Sometimes less is more for an actor and Blanchett has to run the gamut of emotions, while Morton as Mary Stuart gets to revel in her characters indignation that she is not queen. Tom Hollander bizarrely watches her at times almost in love?
I don't think I'm getting across the absurdness of the movie. Again at times deliciously absurd, such as the clear message this film sends. England (Protestantism) saved us, indeed Western Civilization from the dreadful curse of Spain (Roman Catholicism). And not only that but God was actually on Elizabeth's side. And we know this because of the countless shots of Elizabeth in churches being back lit by the golden rays of the sun as she wears her white face paint and white virginal gowns instilling an angelic image in her.
Absurd? How about that final defeat of the armada, we get cuts to Spain where Philip prays by a lone candle that is dangerously close to blowing out or the symbolic white horse on one of the ships. What in the world is that horse about?
At times I had the most pleasurable of grins as this movie was going, trying not to laugh out right and yet not hating the movie just amused in a good way. The performances are strong, the story a bit hollow. I can't really recommend it to anyone except possibly the most devout of Cate Blanchett fans and even then I suspect rental is the preferred option.
-Kindly, Rory
A Rebuttal:
The horse? Oh my God, I forgot all about the horse! I too have no idea what was going on there.
Absurd, yes. It was somewhat absurd. Perhaps the movie didn't get absurd enough, now that I think about it. If it really did yearn to be a rousing action-adventure pic then it could have said to hell with historical accuracy to an even higher degree and made the dialogue even more over-the-top and encouraged more over-acting. But it didn't. It seemed to reign in at certain parts and try to tell us that, in fact, it wasn't wanting to be absurd. But it was. And if it didn't want to be and it is then....
I don't know what else to say, quite frankly. I think my colleague and I have summed it up enough for you. "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is why Netflix was invented. Be thankful you have Rory and I to spend our hard-earned money to tell you these things.
Keep it real, Nick
Did I tell you 1585 was eventful?
"Elizabeth" seems to have its eye on being an action-epic, complete with sumptuous visuals, lavish costumes, and thunderous performances. And it is, kinda'. All three things I mentioned can be checked off the list but there seems to be something missing. I was enjoying the movie richly at the start but the deeper we got into it, the more my enjoyment faded.
None of my dismay is Blanchett's fault. She is just as good as she was the first time around in this role. Not many actresses could pull off playing a Queen. Why? You've gotta' strike that difficult balance between royalty and, in private, still somewhat of a regular person. But not too much of a regular person because you know for a fact you're not. Owen is good, too, but I wish heartily the screenplay hadn't made him a walking proverb. Every other line of his is something like, "Why worry about tomorrow when all we have is today?" The King Philip we find here may as well have swung in on a chandelier from an old episode of Zorro. The only one who is about on par with Blancett is Samantha Morton as Mary, the wily Catholic cousin. She chews scenery but doesn't chew it too fiercely as to overdo it.
Granted, I don't know that much about English history, and I'm sure someone who does could pick this thing apart. I do know that apparently Walter Raleigh didn't steer a burning ship directly into the Spanish Armada but supervised this from the shore. Of course, that's not quite as dramatic, is it? So I had no problem with the Raleigh of the film being aboard the flaming ship. But, man, was this sequence boring to watch. I mentioned the film seemed intent on being an epic and you would assume England's defeat of the Spanish Armada would lend itself rather easily to epicness but Kapur botches it. Raleigh's steering of his ship into the enemy seemed about as authentic as the production of the same event in a high school play.
Do I recommend this movie? Well, Blanchett's work is worth the ticket price if you're the type of person who can get into a film solely because of the acting. But if you're looking for an accurate re-telling of history, you probably want to avoid it. And if you're looking for a swashbuckling adventure with some soap-opera mixed in, go to Netflix and add "Captain Blood" to your queue instead.
- Regards, Nick
A Response:
I probably know as much about English history as Nick and yet I can't help but wonder about one glaring problem with "Elizabeth." I know for a fact the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, not 1585. This should give you a sense of the absurd world we are entering when watching the film. Not that the compression of time isn't sometimes a dramatic necessity. Besides this film doesn't really want to be about history, it wants to be about people. In any event, since how time passes in this film is not entirely clear (we get one date at movie's open informing us it is 1585) it may not be historical compression at all but rather neglect to orient the audience that the time passing was years not days, weeks or even months.
Above I used the word absurd, Nick used the word sumptuous. These seem about right. This film wants to be epic and hits on absurd. Not that being absurd is necesarily a bad thing. Sometimes it makes a film that would otherwise be intolerable quite fun to watch, even if that wasn't the intention of the director. At times the film is quite bland, visually attractive to be sure with the cavernous palace sets and the menagerie of court clothing but unsure of what it truly wants to be all that visual feasting is muted.
There are times when the film is quite boring and tried my patience. Sad to say this was frequently when Clive Owen is on screen because I agree, Nick, all he was allowed to do was spout trite aphorisms. There are those moments when the film tries desperately to show a human side to the austere virginal queen letting us know that there was a woman behind the image who wanted what all women (and men to be sure) want: love and happiness. And so we get these scenes of extreme intimacy to the private life of the queen well played by Blanchet but ultimately hollow.
I'll cite one example, the queen surrounded by her female court is watching them dance, while Raleigh (Clive Owen) watches on. She decides he should dance as well, and unable to act on her own desires commands him to dance with her favorite attendant. And as she watches on with their awkward dance, the audience aware that the two dancers have recently become lovers, Blanchett looks at them and knows and a vein of jealousy can be seen. How the hell does she know? Queenly intuition? Blanchett's face is pitch perfect but where is the motivation?
There is an amazing cast here of English actors here: Geoffrey Rush, Owen, Blanchett, Rhys Ifans (Rhys Ifans, holy cow I didn't see that coming), Tom Hollander and Samantha Morton. Nick, you noted that Morton comes close to matching Blanchett but I'll go and commit heresy here and say she was better. Sometimes less is more for an actor and Blanchett has to run the gamut of emotions, while Morton as Mary Stuart gets to revel in her characters indignation that she is not queen. Tom Hollander bizarrely watches her at times almost in love?
I don't think I'm getting across the absurdness of the movie. Again at times deliciously absurd, such as the clear message this film sends. England (Protestantism) saved us, indeed Western Civilization from the dreadful curse of Spain (Roman Catholicism). And not only that but God was actually on Elizabeth's side. And we know this because of the countless shots of Elizabeth in churches being back lit by the golden rays of the sun as she wears her white face paint and white virginal gowns instilling an angelic image in her.
Absurd? How about that final defeat of the armada, we get cuts to Spain where Philip prays by a lone candle that is dangerously close to blowing out or the symbolic white horse on one of the ships. What in the world is that horse about?
At times I had the most pleasurable of grins as this movie was going, trying not to laugh out right and yet not hating the movie just amused in a good way. The performances are strong, the story a bit hollow. I can't really recommend it to anyone except possibly the most devout of Cate Blanchett fans and even then I suspect rental is the preferred option.
-Kindly, Rory
A Rebuttal:
The horse? Oh my God, I forgot all about the horse! I too have no idea what was going on there.
Absurd, yes. It was somewhat absurd. Perhaps the movie didn't get absurd enough, now that I think about it. If it really did yearn to be a rousing action-adventure pic then it could have said to hell with historical accuracy to an even higher degree and made the dialogue even more over-the-top and encouraged more over-acting. But it didn't. It seemed to reign in at certain parts and try to tell us that, in fact, it wasn't wanting to be absurd. But it was. And if it didn't want to be and it is then....
I don't know what else to say, quite frankly. I think my colleague and I have summed it up enough for you. "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" is why Netflix was invented. Be thankful you have Rory and I to spend our hard-earned money to tell you these things.
Keep it real, Nick
Monday, August 6, 2007
Bourne Ultimatum
Jason Bourne is back for his third adventure. Jason is continuing in his quest to discover who exactly he is. The events of the second film jarred loose some tantalizing flashbacks and Bourne is determined to remember. A reporter uncovers some information that is of interest to Bourne who is racing against the clock to get to the reporter as CIA operatives try to find Bourne and the reporter. The chase takes Bourne around the world to various locales as Bourne stays one step ahead of his antagonists. The story is a sound one, even if we don't really care about the story. Greengrass in the director's helm knows this movie is about the action.
This movie gets to the action and sets a pulse pounding pace. Who knew that walking could instill such tension and yet it does. Bourne moves methodically through the movie outwitting his antagonists and when forced outfighting them as well. As in the previous films, Bourne faces off against agents who are trained exactly like him and those fights are the icing on the cake of the best action movie I've seen in a long time. This movie is fantastic to be sure but it doesn't violate its own dimensions and it doesn't do anything that totally removes you from the movie (such as a man jumping onto a flying jet).
Does a movie like this need decent actors? Hard to say, but this movie has a plethora of them. From small bit roles by Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles to major roles for Joan Allen and David Strathairn, this movie boasts a pretty amazing cast. Even Albert Finney and Scott Glenn show up. I did feel the Julia Stiles scenes a bit forced almost like she was finally getting the screen time she was promised in the first two films. I'm not sure I really care about Bourne's back story and the movie gives little time to it, forcing it in at the end in what is arguably the slowest part of the movie.
If I have any real complaint with this film, its the advertising which revealed one of the cleverest parts of the movie in a preview for the film which makes it rather unremarkable when you see it on screen. This movie had me smiling with glee and fondly reminiscent of its predecessors. Here's hoping for a fourth Bourne film because I could visit this franchise again.
Rory
This movie gets to the action and sets a pulse pounding pace. Who knew that walking could instill such tension and yet it does. Bourne moves methodically through the movie outwitting his antagonists and when forced outfighting them as well. As in the previous films, Bourne faces off against agents who are trained exactly like him and those fights are the icing on the cake of the best action movie I've seen in a long time. This movie is fantastic to be sure but it doesn't violate its own dimensions and it doesn't do anything that totally removes you from the movie (such as a man jumping onto a flying jet).
Does a movie like this need decent actors? Hard to say, but this movie has a plethora of them. From small bit roles by Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles to major roles for Joan Allen and David Strathairn, this movie boasts a pretty amazing cast. Even Albert Finney and Scott Glenn show up. I did feel the Julia Stiles scenes a bit forced almost like she was finally getting the screen time she was promised in the first two films. I'm not sure I really care about Bourne's back story and the movie gives little time to it, forcing it in at the end in what is arguably the slowest part of the movie.
If I have any real complaint with this film, its the advertising which revealed one of the cleverest parts of the movie in a preview for the film which makes it rather unremarkable when you see it on screen. This movie had me smiling with glee and fondly reminiscent of its predecessors. Here's hoping for a fourth Bourne film because I could visit this franchise again.
Rory
If you have yet to see a so-called summer movie and you really want to see one and you're perusing the movie ads in attempt to choose let me just go ahead and advise you to put down those ads and stop thinking about it.
This is it. This is the one. Go see "The Bourne Ultimatum". Wowie wow wow.
Not to rub it in, Rory, but I'm so thankful you had to write the synopsis since that frees me to just rant and rave like the lunatic I love to be upon seeing a film as fantastic as this one. I would like to take every director who yearns to make an action film in the next few years, sit them down and make them watch this movie and "The Bourne Supremacy" over and over. These movies are how it's done. This Paul Greengrass can direct.
"Who knew walking could instill such tension?" Great line, Rory, and so great because it's completely true. Holy gods, that opening sequence. How long did that go on? It's the reporter trying to meet Bourne and a plethora of bad guys on the reporter's tail and Bourne directing the reporter to and fro via his cellphone. It's downright amazing. There's one gunshot (as I recall), some fisticuffs, no explosions, but more than anything it's just tension generated through the art of filmmaking. It brought to mind that sequence in "Minority Report" where the pre-cog (is that the right term?) guides Tom Cruise to safety in the shopping mall. Except it's done with even more tension and skill in "Ultimatum".
Or, to say it another way, Greengrass out-Spielberg's Spielberg.
The movie hardly ever slows down once it gets going and when it does slow down it's only to give the bare-bones exposition that is needed to make sure our bearings are straight and then it revs right back up. We do receive what the esteemed Roger Ebert would term the Talking Killer Scene but it's the briefest Talking Killer Scene of all time. It has to be there because what's said must be said but it says absolutely no more than what is essential and then hurries along. You could almost see Greengrass in the editing bay hollering, "Shorter! Shorter!"
But above all, there's one moment in particular that needs to be mentioned. For me, it sums up not just this installment but the entire trilogy. There has just been a mano-a-mano fight in a Tangier apartment between Bourne and one of our bad guys (and this fight, by the way, is just as virtuoso as anything else in the movie - I loved the decision to cut the soundtrack during the battle). Once it's concluded, Bourne gets that look that in ANY OTHER action movie would be followed immediately by a crafty one-liner. At the screening I attended you could literally feel the audience leaning forward in their seats in anticipation of this crafty one-liner.
And Bourne gets that look and then says.............nothing. Absolutely nothing. I very nearly stood and cheered because of the lack of the crafty one-liner. I hate to harp on it - scratch that, I do like harping on it. But how refreshing it is to get a movie that DOESN'T give you exactly what you expect.
You mention the possibility of a fourth film. Do we need one? Well, probably not technically, but I certainly wouldn't mind another one. If this is the conclusion to the series then a superb conclusion it is. "The Bourne Ultimatum" is everything I could possibly want in an action movie and not a thing less.
Nick
A Rebuttal:
My inclination is to state some negative criticism of the movie which I do have but I won't for two reasons:
One: the criticism revolves around Julia Stiles and as Julia Stiles is on of my top five cinematic crushes I will ignore it (it isn't really Julia that is flawed anyway).
Two: This small criticism in no way counters how fantastic this movie was to watch.
If you are really curious just ask me and I'll rant.
Rory
A Rebuttal:
My inclination is to state some negative criticism of the movie which I do have but I won't for two reasons:
One: the criticism revolves around Julia Stiles and as Julia Stiles is on of my top five cinematic crushes I will ignore it (it isn't really Julia that is flawed anyway).
Two: This small criticism in no way counters how fantastic this movie was to watch.
If you are really curious just ask me and I'll rant.
Rory
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Live Free or Die Hard
"(Bruce Willis) gets that look in his eye that says: It's going to be a pain in the ass for me to do this, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't." - Roger Ebert
In the last few years, or ever since the advent of 24, it seems all anyone ever wants to talk about when it comes to saving the world is Jack Baur this and Jack Baur that. Well let us remember that years before Jack Baur came on the scene John McClane was the one responsible for saving our world. And not only would he save the world but he'd be pissed off and irritated the whole time he was doing it.
John McClane is a cynic's perfect hero. I realized this while watching Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth installment of the successful action movies series dating back to the 80's. And the above quote from the esteemed Mr. Ebert seems to hit the nail on the head. Has anyone ever seemed so annoyed to be the hero? He delivers some mumbo-jumbo to his sidekick at some point about divorce and how you get "nothing" for being a hero but, come on, even if John McClane was still married and got "something" for being the hero you know he'd still be ticked off about it. Every action sequence may as well be punctuated by McClane sighing with a shake of his head as he re-loads his gun. "You must be runnin' out of bad guys," he says at one point to the main bad guy. But he's not just toying with the main guy. There's exasperation in that comment, too. What did he say in the second Die Hard? "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?" Well, here it's how can the same shit happen to the same guy four times?
As the movie opens the FBI's computer system has been hacked into and so local law enforcement has to bring in the most notorious hackers around the country since......it doesn't really matter, I suppose. What matters is John McClane is assigned to bring in Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and, by golly, before they can even make their way out of Matt's apartment the bad guys have already started shooting at them.
A genius hacker, you see, bearing a classic villain name of Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) has set out to perpetuate a "firesale" on America. Much like John McClane I had no idea what a "firesale" is. Apparently it's a three-pronged attack on the nation's transportation, power system, and financial system. But who really cares about all that? This is a throwback to the action movies of my youth. Go, go, GO!!!
Rory, we've discussed the perils of exposition before and I was thankful for near non-existence of exposition here. The movie barely even takes time to slow down and have the Main Bad Guy discuss his motives. We have no time for such nonsense.
This is one of the first times I can recall wanting to cheer a character before the character actually appears. At the very start of the proceedings we see John McClane's daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) with a young man who we know John McClane can't possibly like and then the camera shifts to a Point Of View shot and you think to yourself - hey, that's John McClane's, point of view, isn't it? He's about to show up and kick that young man's ass, isn't he? Woo hoo!
And so what if John McClane's one-liners aren't as crafty as they used to be, and so what if he, apparently, doesn't smoke anymore (or is that too un-PC now)? He's still the action hero to end all action heroes. Slow-motion-bullets and slinging webs and CGI-generated pirate ships and robots that turn into automobiles are no match for a helicopter crashing via unusual tactics.........for real. Or, as McClane declares at one crucial juncture, "Enough of this kung fu shit". Amen, John. Amen.
Live Free or Die Hard is want I personally want in an action movie. I probably won't ever watch it again but it genuinely entertained me for two hours. In fact, at the end I even had a little smile.
Much is made here of John McClane being a little behind the times technologically. Well, so what if he is? He still knows how to save the world. What else is it he says in the second movie? Ah yes, "As far as I'm concerned progress peaked with frozen pizza." And as far as I'm concerned, tentpole "summer-movies" peaked with John McClane.
-Nick
A Response:
I confess I saw this movie on opening night. It has taken this long for my thoughts because I was desperate to find something anything that would allow me to not make this number four in the negative column. I wish I could say that I magically found that thing last night and am here to tell you how much I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard. I wish I could say all that but I can't. Perhaps this forum is not one in which Nick and I always disagree on movies but one in which I hate every movie we see. Hate is too strong a word for the latest adventure of John McClane. I didn't hate it, I just didn't particularly like it either.
John McClane never saved the world. He saved an office building. Then he saved an airport and its passengers. Thirdly he saved a city (sort of) and now finally we have him doing what Jack Baur does on a regular basis. Now John McClane is saving the nation. It is this escalation and the savviness of his foes that suggests Jack Baur and the boys at 24 have a lot more influence on this film than I think you give them credit, Nick. Without Jack Baur, we might not have this latest from the Die Hard franchise. And where do we go from here? If there is another sequel he has to save the whole planet, and sweet maria if a 6th film were made would he save the solar system? Are we really looking at the possibility of Alien terrorists sometime in the near future? An Independence Day meets Die Hard scenario?
But this isn't about 24. This is about John McClane and Die Hard. Remember what happened in the first film? I don't remember the exact 100% details but I remember that it was about a guy who wanted money and his scheme wasn't that complex. The sequel was about a prison break. The third was about money again but the means to that end had gotten way more complex. This film's villain is after money too but his means are beyond complex. I just stopped caring. Maybe techno savy geeks watching this film enjoy that element but I'm a guy who can barely program all his electronics and has a computer way more powerful than he will ever need, ever.
And what about the villain? Timothy Olyphant? Alan Rickman he is not. Jeremy Irons he is definately not. Hell I wouldn't even rank Olyphant ahead of William Sadler when it comes to mastermind villainy. Oh yeah I said it. So we have the weakest villain from the series to date with the most convoluted plot. We have a new side kick (he always has a side kick did you ever notice that?) in Justin Long. Justin is not suited to this role, he speaks nonsense techno babble and acts pretty poorly (even for an action flick).
But a film like this isn't about the plot (although I would argue it is about the villain), it's about the action. Is the action worth the price of admission? Yes and no. A lot of the early action sequences are high octane and intense and just pure fun. They may stretch the imagination but not so as to take you from the picture. There is also some fancy shots of those French martial arts which were featured in District B13 (a fine (and French even )martial arts action film for those interested). I've been seeing a lot of this recently. The camera for once actually stays still on the action which is a pleasant change from the frequent "let's move the camera so fast no one can know what is going on" motif. Near the end though, the action gets cartoonish. It was so ridiculous that I was literally taken out of the film. A plane under an overpass? I suspect the physics are a bit wonky there.
I agree, Nick, Bruce Willis gives a great wearied performance to John McClane but even he is strained to get through the character development scenes with Justin Long (since when does McClane explain why he does what he does?). In any event I found the recent 16 Blocks a much better angle for what this film could have been. It wasn't big it was simple. This is what this series needs, a back to basics model.
So when we add up everything we get a foolish plot with an unconvincing villain, and a lackluster co-star with okay but not mind wowing action sequences. Bruce Willis' wearied McClane almost carries the film but falls just short. If we used some sort of scale or system to review our movies this one would fall just short of positive but negative nonetheless.
A Rebuttal:
Touche, Rory. John McClane technically did not save the world in the first three or, I suppose, in this one. But, come on, it felt like he saved the world. Or that he could have saved the world, if he really wanted or needed to. And besides, if he doesn't overcome the odds in these movies than the terrorists would win. And if the terrorists win, well, our President can certainly tell you that if the terrorists win, freedom loses. And if freedom loses, the world loses. Am I right, people?
I agree that Olyphant is an amazingly bland villain. As an actor he's bland by nature. And while I felt that served him extremely well on Deadwood, it fails him here. We don't want bland villains. We want, well, Alan Rickman from the first one. A charming but ultimately sadistic rogue. And McClane's sidekick sure as crap ain't no Al Powell. And while his daughter is feisty she just can't match McClane's ex-wife. And........but why am I whining?
I liked the movie and that's really all there is to it. Yes, the big action scene at the end with the plane and the semi and the freeway is utterly absurd but you've gotta' respect the placement of it. Any other action movie made today would have put that sequence at the start. But Live Free or Die Hard actually knows something about pacing.
In the last few years, or ever since the advent of 24, it seems all anyone ever wants to talk about when it comes to saving the world is Jack Baur this and Jack Baur that. Well let us remember that years before Jack Baur came on the scene John McClane was the one responsible for saving our world. And not only would he save the world but he'd be pissed off and irritated the whole time he was doing it.
John McClane is a cynic's perfect hero. I realized this while watching Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth installment of the successful action movies series dating back to the 80's. And the above quote from the esteemed Mr. Ebert seems to hit the nail on the head. Has anyone ever seemed so annoyed to be the hero? He delivers some mumbo-jumbo to his sidekick at some point about divorce and how you get "nothing" for being a hero but, come on, even if John McClane was still married and got "something" for being the hero you know he'd still be ticked off about it. Every action sequence may as well be punctuated by McClane sighing with a shake of his head as he re-loads his gun. "You must be runnin' out of bad guys," he says at one point to the main bad guy. But he's not just toying with the main guy. There's exasperation in that comment, too. What did he say in the second Die Hard? "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?" Well, here it's how can the same shit happen to the same guy four times?
As the movie opens the FBI's computer system has been hacked into and so local law enforcement has to bring in the most notorious hackers around the country since......it doesn't really matter, I suppose. What matters is John McClane is assigned to bring in Matt Farrell (Justin Long) and, by golly, before they can even make their way out of Matt's apartment the bad guys have already started shooting at them.
A genius hacker, you see, bearing a classic villain name of Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) has set out to perpetuate a "firesale" on America. Much like John McClane I had no idea what a "firesale" is. Apparently it's a three-pronged attack on the nation's transportation, power system, and financial system. But who really cares about all that? This is a throwback to the action movies of my youth. Go, go, GO!!!
Rory, we've discussed the perils of exposition before and I was thankful for near non-existence of exposition here. The movie barely even takes time to slow down and have the Main Bad Guy discuss his motives. We have no time for such nonsense.
This is one of the first times I can recall wanting to cheer a character before the character actually appears. At the very start of the proceedings we see John McClane's daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) with a young man who we know John McClane can't possibly like and then the camera shifts to a Point Of View shot and you think to yourself - hey, that's John McClane's, point of view, isn't it? He's about to show up and kick that young man's ass, isn't he? Woo hoo!
And so what if John McClane's one-liners aren't as crafty as they used to be, and so what if he, apparently, doesn't smoke anymore (or is that too un-PC now)? He's still the action hero to end all action heroes. Slow-motion-bullets and slinging webs and CGI-generated pirate ships and robots that turn into automobiles are no match for a helicopter crashing via unusual tactics.........for real. Or, as McClane declares at one crucial juncture, "Enough of this kung fu shit". Amen, John. Amen.
Live Free or Die Hard is want I personally want in an action movie. I probably won't ever watch it again but it genuinely entertained me for two hours. In fact, at the end I even had a little smile.
Much is made here of John McClane being a little behind the times technologically. Well, so what if he is? He still knows how to save the world. What else is it he says in the second movie? Ah yes, "As far as I'm concerned progress peaked with frozen pizza." And as far as I'm concerned, tentpole "summer-movies" peaked with John McClane.
-Nick
A Response:
I confess I saw this movie on opening night. It has taken this long for my thoughts because I was desperate to find something anything that would allow me to not make this number four in the negative column. I wish I could say that I magically found that thing last night and am here to tell you how much I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard. I wish I could say all that but I can't. Perhaps this forum is not one in which Nick and I always disagree on movies but one in which I hate every movie we see. Hate is too strong a word for the latest adventure of John McClane. I didn't hate it, I just didn't particularly like it either.
John McClane never saved the world. He saved an office building. Then he saved an airport and its passengers. Thirdly he saved a city (sort of) and now finally we have him doing what Jack Baur does on a regular basis. Now John McClane is saving the nation. It is this escalation and the savviness of his foes that suggests Jack Baur and the boys at 24 have a lot more influence on this film than I think you give them credit, Nick. Without Jack Baur, we might not have this latest from the Die Hard franchise. And where do we go from here? If there is another sequel he has to save the whole planet, and sweet maria if a 6th film were made would he save the solar system? Are we really looking at the possibility of Alien terrorists sometime in the near future? An Independence Day meets Die Hard scenario?
But this isn't about 24. This is about John McClane and Die Hard. Remember what happened in the first film? I don't remember the exact 100% details but I remember that it was about a guy who wanted money and his scheme wasn't that complex. The sequel was about a prison break. The third was about money again but the means to that end had gotten way more complex. This film's villain is after money too but his means are beyond complex. I just stopped caring. Maybe techno savy geeks watching this film enjoy that element but I'm a guy who can barely program all his electronics and has a computer way more powerful than he will ever need, ever.
And what about the villain? Timothy Olyphant? Alan Rickman he is not. Jeremy Irons he is definately not. Hell I wouldn't even rank Olyphant ahead of William Sadler when it comes to mastermind villainy. Oh yeah I said it. So we have the weakest villain from the series to date with the most convoluted plot. We have a new side kick (he always has a side kick did you ever notice that?) in Justin Long. Justin is not suited to this role, he speaks nonsense techno babble and acts pretty poorly (even for an action flick).
But a film like this isn't about the plot (although I would argue it is about the villain), it's about the action. Is the action worth the price of admission? Yes and no. A lot of the early action sequences are high octane and intense and just pure fun. They may stretch the imagination but not so as to take you from the picture. There is also some fancy shots of those French martial arts which were featured in District B13 (a fine (and French even )martial arts action film for those interested). I've been seeing a lot of this recently. The camera for once actually stays still on the action which is a pleasant change from the frequent "let's move the camera so fast no one can know what is going on" motif. Near the end though, the action gets cartoonish. It was so ridiculous that I was literally taken out of the film. A plane under an overpass? I suspect the physics are a bit wonky there.
I agree, Nick, Bruce Willis gives a great wearied performance to John McClane but even he is strained to get through the character development scenes with Justin Long (since when does McClane explain why he does what he does?). In any event I found the recent 16 Blocks a much better angle for what this film could have been. It wasn't big it was simple. This is what this series needs, a back to basics model.
So when we add up everything we get a foolish plot with an unconvincing villain, and a lackluster co-star with okay but not mind wowing action sequences. Bruce Willis' wearied McClane almost carries the film but falls just short. If we used some sort of scale or system to review our movies this one would fall just short of positive but negative nonetheless.
A Rebuttal:
Touche, Rory. John McClane technically did not save the world in the first three or, I suppose, in this one. But, come on, it felt like he saved the world. Or that he could have saved the world, if he really wanted or needed to. And besides, if he doesn't overcome the odds in these movies than the terrorists would win. And if the terrorists win, well, our President can certainly tell you that if the terrorists win, freedom loses. And if freedom loses, the world loses. Am I right, people?
I agree that Olyphant is an amazingly bland villain. As an actor he's bland by nature. And while I felt that served him extremely well on Deadwood, it fails him here. We don't want bland villains. We want, well, Alan Rickman from the first one. A charming but ultimately sadistic rogue. And McClane's sidekick sure as crap ain't no Al Powell. And while his daughter is feisty she just can't match McClane's ex-wife. And........but why am I whining?
I liked the movie and that's really all there is to it. Yes, the big action scene at the end with the plane and the semi and the freeway is utterly absurd but you've gotta' respect the placement of it. Any other action movie made today would have put that sequence at the start. But Live Free or Die Hard actually knows something about pacing.
Perhaps it just that our recent spate of American action films can't hold a candle to what was being churned out in the 80's and early 90's (aside from the Bourne films, that is) and so when something comes along that's defiantly old school, and knowingly one-ups itself as it goes, that I'm much more willing to forgive its clear flaws.
That, and if a movie provides me at least one indelible character, I can roll with it. One character that makes me feel like I'm right there with him (or her) in the muck and the mire. One character that makes me feel what he (or she) is feeling, every step of the way. Bruce Willis does that yet again as John McClane. I thought he did carry the movie.
I thought he strapped it to his back and, even if the wheels were starting to come off and the gas was getting low, lugged it right over the finish line.
(But how about if the series ends? Right here, right now? Does that work for everyone?)
-Nick
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